People also forget what they did and continue to do in the marshall islands and their literal apartheid there.
Goooood sleep!
USian here, and totally agree. The willful ignorance is stunning to behold.
But help me with my potential ignorance here - is this meme also suggesting that ordinary citizens of other developed countries know about these things? Do high school history and social studies classes have a day or a week that discuss US imperialism & shady dealings of recent decades?
My impression has always been that people in other countries read about this awful shit in the same places I do online, and that the differences in mainstream knowledge are about much more basic stuff like coal and climate change being bad while healthcare is good.
Belgian here. Nope. No idea what they’re on about.
A lot of this is really old so it’s the kind of thing my parents casually mentioned when I was growing up.
But then we learn the details at University, either in history classes or more broadly in any kind of discussion of colonialism, neoimperialism, etc.
In Mexico City we even have a museum dedicated to foreign interventions, and we are not really an AES state.
Do high school history and social studies classes have a day or a week that discuss US imperialism & shady dealings of recent decades?
No, that’s the entire curriculum. Kinda impossible not to properly discuss a country’s hystory without mentioning the US when the US has been fucking with it
Which country?
In Brazil there have been several pretty important meddlings, but at most the schools say that there where “several parties involved”
Like our dictatorship, where I’d only learnt “other countries incentivized the coup”
I’ve heard from many south american comrades, that their school systems have memory-holed this entire historical period of anti-communist massacres. Only now with the pink tide in some of these countries, is there any chance of liberals getting educated about their past.
Oh yeah, 100%
No, that’s the entire curriculum […]
I was asking about what country has US meddling as a considerable fraction of the curriculum
Pretty much only the AES countries. Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, China, Cuba.
I wonder what kind of acrobatics occupied Korea has to go through in their national history books.
Austrian here - 1st question: no idea. 2nd question: no Same here, US imperialism was never discussed as such in my history lessons during the late 80ies and 90ies. Would read about these atrocities only mich later, maybe in more “official” sources only if you’re a student of history or politics and such.
How they will teach about the military dictatorship era of my country without mentioning Operation Condor?
- Operation Condor: right wing dictators in South America repressing leftists with the support of Americans and possibly the French
- Gladio: Post WWII Allied Forces and then NATO intelligence operations to delegitimize and destabilize leftist groups in Eastern Europe from end of WWII through the 1990s
- Ranch Hand: US led effort to destroy the foliage and agricultural land in Vietnam to deprive the Viet Cong of food and places to stage attacks
- PBSuccess: CIA led coup d’état in Guatemala at the request of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita)
- Phoenix Program: CIA led effort to infiltrate the Viet Cong
Gladio targeted all of Europe, not just the East. Remember that the Communist parties were strong in the west too, especially in Italy and France. Hell, they were part of the government under De Gaulle as members of the coalition.
The cia under dulles had a few plots to assassinate De Gaulle. And yet still somehow the French didn’t care and aligned with the US anyway.
Thx. I def recommend reading some articles that get into the depravity of some of these. Outside of the at least half a million people killed in the above operations, the coups, tortures, dissappearances, and entire communities wiped out is staggering.
Some more short blurbs :
- Starting in the 1970s, a CIA-backed coalition of right wing governments in Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, began Operation Condor, a campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, with the stated aim of “eliminating Marxist subversion.” Victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, students and teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerillas. An estimated 30,000 to 80,000 leftists or sympathizers were killed. 1
- From the 1950s-90s, the CIA and NATO ran a series of clandestine networks, headquartered in Rome, Italy called Operation Gladio. Its purpose was supplying aid (primarily money and weaponry) to right wing paramilitaries to attack left-wing movements, and carry out assassinations and bombings, as well as funnel money to centrist political parties. It had operations in Belgium, Finland, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Austria. In Italy, the group had 600+ members, and carried out car bombings during Italy’s years of lead. In Germany, it included former Nazi SS members—Staff Sgt. Heinrich Hoffman, Lt. Col. Hans Rues, and Lt. Col. Walter Kopp. CIA weapons caches are still being discovered in all the countries above.
- From the 1940s - 60s, the CIA provided an average of $5 million annually in covert aid towards financially supporting centrist Italian governments and using the awarding of contracts to weaken the Italian Communist Party’s hold on labor unions. It was also involved in bombings and assassinations as a part of Operation Gladio.
- Between 1963 and 1973, The US dropped ~388,000 tons of napalm bombs in vietnam, compared to 32,357 tons used over three years in the Korean War, and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in 1945. US also sprayed over 5 million acres with herbicide, in Operation Ranch Hand, in a 10 year campaign to deprive the vietnamese of food and vegetation cover. 1,2
- In 1967, the CIA helped South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in villages, in the Phoenix Program. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had executed between 26,000 and 41,000 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters.1
- In 1965, The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Indonesian leader Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA had been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, aided by the CIA, massacred between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being communist, in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. The US continued to support Suharto throughout the 70s, supplying weapons and planes.
Operation Condor: The Brazilian military overthrew president João Goulart in 1964.
a bunch of it was because of his intent to do land reform. we remain the world’s farm to this day while most of our people starve. groceries are super expensive in one of the the biggest agrarian countries on the planet. of course they quite literally tortured and killed lefitsts left and right to the point the movement died and we turned into a reactionary country.
maybe in 40 years they will release the files on how they helped bolsonaro into power. it will remain in the realm of speculation until then. we are just lucky he was really incompetent.
Shhhh they still don’t know radio free Asia is a CIA project.
Is this real or some kind of joke? I’m just now learning about all of this and am almost traumatized honestly.
Real.
All of the “radio free X” are CIA outlets.
Yes, these guys are just giving you the quick overview. The enemy is colonialism, which has transformed into the neocolonial financial system. This includes all the core countries like USA, Israel, Western Europe, Japan, Canada, South Korea, and Australia: together they control the world’s banks, international legal bodies, high-tech manufacturing, as well as the academic and journalistic training and distribution systems.
So the problem is actually much deeper than a few bad sources. The most valuable fields of study have been twisted by capitalism or basically just destroyed. Just take a look at how they’ve been dealing with climate change. Just because dealing with negative externalities on a business or society level is unprofitable or political suicide, we’ve been treating it like it can’t be mitigated by constraints on manufacturing, and new solutions can’t be invented. The Guardian has been posting the same stupid crap about spraying sulfur into the atmosphere for decades, and until recently they pretended investing in green energy + vehicles + industry could never be made profitable.
“Radio Free X” news outlets are generally all US State Department propaganda designed to discredit and de-legitimize their geopolitical adversaries, famously the USSR and PRC, but also Cuba, etc. It’s all very real.
All but Radio Free America.
Excellent bit.
No joke. Same goes for Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, among others. They’re US state propaganda outlets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Global_MediaI try to point people toward developing real media literacy.
Oh dude the CIA has their fingers in soooooooooo much shit in the era between WWII and… now? It’s all published on their web site.
Do other countries not condemn us ultimately for this stuff? Like Russia invaded another nation and the whole world ‘sanctioned’ them economically, why has no one sanctioned US for these mass injustices?
You see, the countries that have stood up against the US are the ones that suffer the sanctions because the US dominates the world financial system.
None of us can stand up to its military power. It is the class bully.
The US has hundreds more millitary bases around the world than any other country. It dominates the world financially via Imperialism, it intentionally underdevelops countries in the global south in order to have them reliant on US food exports so the US gets cheap imports.
Some countries do call out the US Empire for what it is. Palestine, the former USSR, the PRC, Cuba, DPRK, South Africa, Iran, the Russian Federation, all countries the US Empire thoroughly demonizes and propagandizes against as much as it can.
The good news is that the Empire is crumbling, so hopefully we can overthrow it and replace it with a Socialist system.
countries? not really, wed get sanctioned to hell and back and we mostly are not strong enough (like china, russia) to withstand it without collapsing. we can’t do that just yet.
people though? yeah a lot of us are really mad at the empire. its nicer to be blissfully ignorant.
The US has held hegemonic dominance over at least the western world economicly, culturally, and militarily for the past few decades. It’s really hard to go against that so a lot of countries got on board. Some got really rich because of it.
I think of it this way. When your ready about Roman history, you usually see a map that shows the reach of their empire, but not really the boundaries of what you’d consider the core of the empire. Those maps show the extent of their political and military reach.
So just imagine how history books will show the American Empire. The US has hundreds of military bases, everywhere. Its a global empire. It’d be impressive if it weren’t so awful. I mean, can you imagine what life would be like if you lived in a country that has a resource the US wants? It must be a nightmare.
Is this far cry 4
star wars
deleted by creator
Unitedestadian has long been the term used to describe USA citizens by the Spanish-speaking population of the Americas. Not their fault the country picked a length intro title and a vague region as their country name. Imagine if the UK was the UKE, United Kingdom of Europe, and called themselves Europeans by default. The other 90% would be pissed and make their own names, no?
same for portuguese speaking countries afaik, we use “estadunidense”. many bootlickers say “americano” though, i imagine thats the case for spanish-speaking countries too.
Oh those darn bootlickers! 😅
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usonia
I wish this had stuck.
That coulda worked. If only it didn’t sound like an Ace Combat antagonist country. Osea, Usea, Yuktobonia, Belka, Aurelia, Usonia, see?
In truth, I’m just a Frank Lloyd Wright fanboy.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed awesome buildings, but his “usonian” urban planning ideas (i.e. Broadacre City) were fucking catastrophic.
I haven’t been able to find the reference again, but I read something that said he actually worked for the FHA and wrote some of their design guidelines – in other words, that he was directly responsible for the proliferation of suburban sprawl.
I miss a sub I followed on reddit, Frank Lloyd Wrong
Instead of ‘american’ or USian or others, why not Yankee? It has historical significance to the united states, originated a a pejorative, and the south hates it. Perfect
I prefer gringo thanks.
feels too respectful idk
I’m literally a yankee, as in a lifelong resident of the area north of the Mason-Dixon line and I’ve visited several historical civil war sites over the decades because they’re among the inexpensive points of interest within several hours of here.
I think you’re both kind of right. Everything the previous comment said is correct IMO about it starting with a negative connotation and people in the south probably hating it. But modern online usage feels pretty respectful too. Even in a professional setting, if I were on a typical call and somebody from Europe referred to somebody thousands of km (or miles, lol) away on the other side of the US as one of the yankees/yanks, I don’t think it would even register as something I’d remember. (well NOW it will because of this comment, thanks lemmy! :D )
Plus more recently, those of us who do wild shit like pay attention to the outside world don’t exactly take offense to people insulting this fucked up country/government/culture/etc. We’re right here agreeing with you. So something like “yankee” doesn’t stand out much when you read somebody across the world write “fuck all USians” and you think to yourself “…I can see that. That’s fair.”
I’ve also heard that there’s no true Yankee. Kinda like there’s no true Scottsman. For someone in Mexico, all Yankees are from USandA and that’s all they care about. For someone in Louisiana (myself) all Yankees are from north of the Mason-Dixon. For someone in Ohio, all Yankees are from the northeast somewhere. For someone in Jersey, all Yankees are just a bit further northeast. Maybe try Boston, they’ll say. If you ask someone in Boston where to find a Yankee, they’ll direct you to some street corner or a pub.
In Australia we call them “seppos”. Short for “septics”, which comes via rhyming slang from “yank” -> “tank” -> “septic tank”.
Just lower case “yank” will suffice. That one’s already in use.
How…How have I gone so long without hearing about any of this at all? Like I always hear we are evil, but the specifics are chalked up to ‘cold war hysteria/propaganda’
Consider me spooked, and many thanks for the awareness boost OP!
US history programs are 95% propaganda so it’s not surprising.
Same with US state, NGO, and corporate media.
Wait, really?
Unfortunately this meme is only part of it. Things like covering up Unit 731 didn’t even get mentioned.
Well where is the all of it, and why is it all so tough to find for willing individuals? I seek to be more aware I promise
The malevolence of US foriegn policy is woven like a tapestry throughout modern history.
I’m not sure that anyone has been mean-spirited enough to write a single source detailing all of it in one place, but perhaps someone else can suggest one.
If you want to know how it gets hidden from you, Manufacturing Consent is old but a good place to start.
I haven’t heard it myself but the Behind the Bastards podcast about Henry Kissinger is often recommended and probably covers a significant amount of US involvement in foriegn genocides.
First time seeing “United Statesian” idek what to say besides I hope to never encounter it again
Well, you guys should have come up with a better demonym that didn’t belong to the entire continent(s)
Bah! Use a particular state if you know it. Otherwise American serves as well as European.
People who aren’t USAians usually don’t know wtf a Vermont is.
I only learned this exist like this: interested in naval warfare -> there was a battleship named USS Vermont -> US battleships were named after states -> so there must be a state like that -> never heard about it before -> must be a shithole
I, too, wish to never encounter an unitedstatian
I prefer usonian, but ppl seem to hate that even worse. Much shorter than saying “US citizen”, and also not going along with the US cooption of the term america.
should start saying gringo, it also started as a way to protest against us troops (green-go)
Just call them burgers
I find Burgerlander just rolls off your tongue easier
«complaints about stealing this name from Hamburg»
I’ll also accept Burgerstani & Statesian.
I use Yank. I understand some Yanks think Yank only applies to New Englanders. I don’t care, they’re all Yanks.
usaan myself
Usonian evokes that weird Frank Lloyd Wright concept of kitschy suburbia that the US could do with substantially less of.
The hell is a USian?
Citizen of the United States
There are two United States.
Yes, but one of them has an actual name so no one has to call it that
Very true. Posted this one out of respect for my cousins who correct me when I use United States to refer to the USA.
Then again, they probably use estadounidense as demonym for the USA, right?
lol, they do!
Also, Dude, American is not the preferred nomenclature. USian, please.
Jeez, Davel, I’m not talking about the guys who expelled the fucking British empire from their tyrannical petite bourgeoisie slave kingdom here.
Sounds like a term created by those people who get weirdly upset at Americans being called Americans because “America is 2 continents so technically everyone from North and South America is American”
Can’t blame them who the fuck would want to get associated with USians
Shouldn’t the term be USAian?
Would have issues when expanded, but someone above mentioned that Mexico is United Mexican StatesYew-ess-ay-ian doesn’t flow like yew-ess-ian.
I prefer usonian myself, but there’s no official name shorter than “citizens of the US”.
Yea, because it is weird, you dolt. It’s literally just because it’s easier to say that it stuck, but it’s flatly useless. The country’s name is stupid, hard to deal with, and pretty much only the reality on the surface…much like the country itself.
I just say “US citizens”. It would probably be more accurate to say “citizens of the USA” buy my fucking god they aren’t worth that kind of effort.
I don’t usually say “US citizens” because I don’t usually mean only residents with citizenship.
How about US consumers?
I also was hoping it was different from USAian. Needs more 'Merica
Speaking as a…USian?..many of us know about these already and are ashamed of them.
I’m going to bet that if I did one of those street interview things with the question: “Do you know what operation condor is? Do you know what the phoenix program is?” I’d get maybe 1 usonian out of 300 that would have even heard of them.
tbf i didnt recognize any the names but reading about each one was like “oh yeah that thing, i knew about that”.
I can assure you that you are giving the general public far too much credit unfortunately.
Remember, the #1 search on google on Election Day was “did Joe Biden drop out”
Remember, the #1 search on google on Election Day was “did Joe Biden drop out”
Jesus fucking christ. I have not read that before, but it is the most believable thing I’ve seen all week.
I’ll look it up tomorrow. I am always curious, but I cannot handle having this fact confirmed to me right now, lol.
26k people killed in the Phoneix Program alone.
Rather than ‘american’ or others, Yankee? It has historical s
Yankee doesn’t have an s
Ok, how about yahtzee? It almost has an s.
see that’s better. plus it rhymes with their regime.
Instead of ‘american’ or others,
Ranch hand? I can only think of one thing that could be for and it’s not food. lmao
